Create an Azure Storage Account

This guide walks you through the process of creating a new Azure Storage account using the Azure portal. Storage accounts provide a unique namespace for your Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Azure Blob Storage, File Storage, Queue Storage, and Table Storage data objects.

Prerequisites

• An active Azure subscription. If you don't have one, you can create a free account.

Steps to Create a Storage Account

1. Sign in to the Azure portal

Open your web browser and navigate to https://portal.azure.com/. Sign in with your Azure account credentials.

2. Navigate to the Storage Accounts service

In the Azure portal search bar at the top, type "Storage accounts" and select "Storage accounts" from the search results.

3. Initiate the creation process

On the "Storage accounts" page, click the + Create button or the + Add button to begin the storage account creation wizard.

4. Configure basic settings

The "Create a storage account" page consists of several tabs. Start with the Basics tab:

• Subscription: Select the Azure subscription under which you want to create the storage account.
• Resource group: Choose an existing resource group or click Create new to create a new one. Resource groups help you manage related Azure resources.
• Storage account name: Enter a globally unique name for your storage account. The name must be between 3 and 24 characters and can contain only lowercase letters and numbers.
• Region: Select the Azure region where you want to deploy your storage account. Choose a region close to your users or other Azure services you'll be using.
• Performance: Choose between Standard (for general-purpose v2, Blob, File, Queue, and Table storage) or Premium (for block blobs and page blobs). Standard performance is usually sufficient for most use cases.
• Redundancy: Select a data redundancy option. Common options include:
  • Locally redundant storage (LRS): Provides the lowest cost option, replicating data within a single data center.
  • Geo-redundant storage (GRS): Replicates data to a secondary region for higher availability.
  • Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS): Similar to GRS but allows read access to the secondary region.
  • Zone-redundant storage (ZRS): Replicates data across multiple availability zones within a region.

5. Configure advanced settings (Optional)

Navigate to the Advanced tab to configure additional settings:

• Account kind: Typically, StorageV2 (general purpose v2) is recommended for most scenarios as it supports Blob, File, Queue, and Table storage.
• Data Lake Storage Gen2: Enable this option if you plan to use hierarchical namespaces for big data analytics.
• Networking: Configure network access. You can allow access from all networks, private endpoints, or selected virtual networks.
• Data protection: Configure soft delete for blobs, container soft delete, and versioning to protect against accidental data deletion.
• Encryption: By default, data is encrypted at rest with Microsoft-managed keys. You can also choose to use customer-managed keys.

6. Review and create

Click on the Review + create tab. Azure will validate your configuration. Once validation passes, review the summary of your settings and click the Create button.

7. Deployment

The deployment process may take a few minutes. You will see a notification when the deployment is complete. Once deployed, you can navigate to your new storage account resource.